Today, Alberta carries a sustained budget deficit of $10.64b (FP, GoA), at about 10% unemployment rate, and Calgary, once the fastest growing city in Canada sits at 30% office vacancy rate and 7% residential vacancy rate (25Y all time high). The question is that will Calgary become like Detroit? Has Canadian oil and gas […]

The NIOC just announced that it is offering 50 fields to international bidders, 29 of them oil fields and the remainder gas fields. What are the timelines of the prequalification process? Deadline for accepting the applications to enroll into prequalification for IPC tender: 17th of November 2016 Announcement of the qualified bidders: 7th of December […]

Renewable energies are still in infancy stage in Iran, with only 70 MW online. The major challenge of the sector is lack of financing. Given attractive feed-in-tariff’s set by SUNA (13- 32 cents per KW/h) and availability of human resources, infrastructure and EPC capacity, Iran’s renewable energy is at the verge of a massive growth. Investments […]

Iran’s GDP grew 5.7% in 2006 and 9.1 in 2007 (more) when the country managed to attract billions of FDI over 2000-2007. World Bank foresee that Iran’s GDP could steadily grow to 5% and above from this point on. A fast pace of growth could create a challenge in Iran’s domestic market, and that’s where the opportunity is. […]

This is a simple question, but there is not a simple “Yes” or “No” answer to it, at least not yet (up to the date of this post). Up until the 5th of February 2016 the answer to the above question was “No”. Regardless of whether you wanted to export oilfields equipment, provide services, consulting, receiving your invoices, etc. the […]

One of the impacts of the global oil price plunge in 2015 is on the relative attractiveness of some host countries versus others. The following is a brief review on recent analysis by Palantir which was presented in SPE Calgary chapter (see the full report here). The assumptions: Medium Oilfield 100 million bbls; lifting cost […]

Shrinking profits for whatever reason, can stimulate the M&A activity in any industry. We still remember consolidations in upstream sector following oil price crash in 1999, but what will happen this time if the oil price stays in the $80-$90 range, say for 6-12 month? Should we expect consolidations, or more spin-offs? According to EIA “shortfall between cash earnings […]

What strategy have the major oil sands players hired? lessons learned from oil sands pioneers. Despite of a low political and social risk environment, Canadian oil sands is still under pressure. This is while a handful number of pipeline projects are at negotiation stage to provide higher takeaway capacity. The heavy differential has narrowed from highs […]

How to Optimize Your Oil & Gas Upstream Portfolio; Upstream Portfolio Management (part 2/2) Portfolio management or optimization of the portfolio is being referred to by several leaders in energy sector. This article presents an introduction to the topic and intends to introduce how portfolio management is done in E&P sector. Syd

How to Optimize Your Oil & Gas Upstream Portfolio; Upstream Portfolio Management (part 1/2) Portfolio management or optimization of the portfolio is being referred to by several leaders in energy sector. This article presents an introduction to the topic and intends to introduce how portfolio management is done in E&P sector. Part 1/2: Asset Level […]